


Guaranteed

by RedHorse



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: But not terribly graphic, Haunting, Horror, Humor, M/M, descriptions of dead bodies, does that count as MCD?, harry is a ghost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-11-26 00:28:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20921159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHorse/pseuds/RedHorse
Summary: ”But there must be a reason for the low price,” protests the realtor.”Wouldn’t all that be part of the seller’s guarantee?” Tom absently lists the mandatory disclosures from the form his realtor showed him with the ease of a photographic memory:some seepage in northeast corner of cellar; signs of disease in the oak tree adjacent to the carriage house; attic storm windows need replacement; evidence of one (1) poltergeist house-wide, rated B- (benevolent/leaning negative).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aroundloafofbread](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aroundloafofbread/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [aroundloafofbread](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aroundloafofbread/pseuds/aroundloafofbread) in the [October_Flash_Fest_Part_One](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/October_Flash_Fest_Part_One) collection. 

> Originally posted anonymously as part of a discord flash fest. Editing posting date now to reflect author reveals. <3
> 
> **Prompt:**
> 
> Harry is a vengeful spirit stuck in a haunted house who bemoans the injustice done to him. But as expected, no one will ever come to save his soul. Over time he grows more resentful. A new tenant comes to live and Harry is bent on chasing the person out by leaving dead bodies at the door.
> 
> Tom Riddle, new tenant of the haunted house, mistakes all the dead bodies as courting gifts.
> 
> (Can be Muggle AU or magic or anything!)

“You’re sure?” Tom walks slowly through the living room and gazes at the fireplace. The traditional protective runes are carved into the brick mantle, flecked with real gold. He can’t quite contain his excitement. A true traditional wizard’s home. He can’t believe it’s in his price range. What luck!

”Yes, I double-checked the asking price,” confirms his realtor. “Perhaps more investigation is in order?” He looks uneasily at the same fireplace Tom was just admiring.

”If we delay our offer, we’ll miss our opportunity.” Tom already owns a very sophisticated leather chesterfield sofa that will fit nicely in the den, he thinks, trailing his fingers along the textured wallpaper as he wanders into the next room.

”But there must be a reason for the low price,” protests the realtor.

”Wouldn’t all that be part of the seller’s guarantee?” Tom absently lists the mandatory disclosures from the form his realtor showed him with the ease of a photographic memory: _some seepage in northeast corner of cellar; signs of disease in the oak tree adjacent to the carriage house; attic storm windows need replacement; evidence of one (1) poltergeist house-wide, rated B- (benevolent/leaning negative)._

_“_Perhaps the seepage is worse than they let on. You can’t underestimate the seriousness of foundation problems.”

Tom leans against the windowsill and studies the garden, still tidy but with most of the plants fading toward dormancy. It’s almost fall, his favorite time of year. He recognizes a few of the feeble, snaking vines as formerly magical. Everywhere are signs that the house is one of the rare ones that is worthy of Tom. ”No,” he tells the realtor shortly. “I want it. Make it happen.”

***

The day of closing, the seller meets Tom to deliver the keys. He is a portly middle-aged man with thinning hair and emits a strangled cry when he comes up beside Tom and the body that Tom has been studying with unmasked curiosity.

”What—on earth—?“ the seller exclaims.

The body is stretched on its side. Its clothing is ragged. It’s well into decay and the smell is powerful. It was a woman in life, Tom thinks, noting the delicate bone structure of the face, literally visible where skin and muscle and tissue have desiccated and split.

”Well, congratulations,” the seller mutters awkwardly. After all, it’s terribly impolite to criticize a magical descendant’s culture. Tom should be frustrated that he’s been outted in this political climate. But instead, he’s absorbed by wondering who could have known his secret and also gone to all the trouble of exhuming a body for him on such a special occasion, his first day in the new house.

Tom feels — it’s strange, like being strangled around the heart, but he supposed it’s what other would call — touched.

***

Tom determines the wall paper is unoriginal and strips it. Beneath is delicate plaster hand-painted with glittering patterns that make Tom’s heart clench with excited delight. 

He shampoos the rugs until they’re bright again. He finds crates of original objects in the attic and stacks of original furniture, which he polishes to a muted gleam so he can display them around the house. 

He’s still working at the bank and putting in long days, but the house is a delight to him. He daydreams of what he wants to do or change then comes home energized to follow through. 

Everything is in order and he swears the house preens in its restored condition.

With the last of his savings he has the foundation inspected and the attic storm windows replaced. The worst the B- presence does is moan periodically, near midnight.


	2. Chapter 2

The B- presence is more of a B+, to Tom’s chagrin. Sometimes it tidies the house behind him. Once it leaves daisies in a vase on the dining room windowsill. He can, occasionally, hear it humming pleasantly to itself in adjacent rooms. It doesn’t show itself — or can’t — which makes it a little less of a distraction, but still, if the house weren’t otherwise so ideal Tom might have complained. Instead he ignores his poltergeist and when he isn’t thinking of the house, he ponders his courting gifts.

There have been two more. The second was a little disappointing, just a scattering of dusty bones, but Tom supposes there may be other demands on the time of someone of the level of significance necessary to affirmatively seek out Tom’s interest. And three bodies, even if one was of dubious quality, in three weeks, is still an impressive gesture.

He’s supposed to let the coroner retain all the bones, but he keeps a delicate piece of vertebrae, polished by time to a bright ivory and just the right size to slip over his forefinger. He’s admiring it when the B- presence decides to become corporeal.

One moment Tom is alone by his fireside, feet propped on the ottoman, and the next there’s a specter of a young man in casual, rumpled clothing that would have been hideous even if it wasn’t several decades out of style.

“You’re very strange,” observes the poltergeist.

Tom has been rotating the bit of bone around his finger, and now he pauses and looks narrowly at his incidentally-acquired pest.

“Am I?”

“Yes,” the specter says immediately. It’s at about fifty-percent transparency, so that Tom can still make out the pattern of the silk upholstery it’s leaning against, draped over the back of the loveseat like it threw itself down in a dramatic pique. “Do you  _ like _ it when people leave bodies on the doorstep?”

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” Tom allows. The poltergeist looks totally puzzled. Tom frowns. “So, you weren’t a wizard, then,” he says with a sigh. Not that he’s surprised, but he’d held out a little hope that there might be  _ something  _ interesting about the presence, considering he has no choice but to coexist with it however long he should wish to remain in the house. 

“What does that have to do with it?”

Tom primly crosses his legs and explains in summarizing terms that those descended from wizards, the superior, magic-wielding race which disappeared from the Earth a generation and a half before, fall into two camps. One, those who embrace their heritage proudly, as Tom has, and two, those who ignore or deny their grand heritage, cowing to the jealousy of the masses who insist a consequence of lineage doesn’t make some of inherently greater value than others.

“And you’re obviously of the  _ first _ camp,” the presence says flatly.

“Of course.” 

Those who, like Tom, are privately celebratory of their special nature, dormant though it may be, have through careful study unearthed all they can of their lost relatives’ intricate customs and ways, including their religion. While human sacrifice is technically illegal in all most countries, a religious exemption allows wizarding descendants to take special privileges with the bodies of those who happen to be dead. 

“Oh,” says the poltergeist with false solemnity. “That seems totally warranted. I’m sure the families of those ‘bodies’ don’t mind at all if you cart them off and…” Its face takes on a strangely flushed expression. It looks down, its throat seizing, as though swallowing. Interesting, how its behaviors all still reflect its own body, lost to the ground somewhere many years before.

“That was all sorted out in the courts,” Tom explains. The landmark case was Malfoy v. Granger,” he begins, and is promptly interrupted by what can only be called a  _ snort _ from the poltergeist.

“Malfoy! Of course.”

“Do you know the case?”

The presence restlessly crosses its arms. “I know the  _ name _ ,” it grumbles.

“So you really think that wizards killed people and gave their loved ones the bodies,” the presence says in a strange tone. When Tom glances up, it looks like the poltergeist is trying not to smile. Tom supposes specters don’t have fully-functioning intellects, and dismisses his confusion.

“The records are conclusive,” he assures the presence. 

“But  _ why _ would we — I mean, er, they — do that? It’s…” the presence wrinkles its nose, “gross. And what does it have to do with love?”

Tom narrows his eyes. “Well, love is sacrifice, of course.”

They persist in silence a moment. The fire hisses, busily consuming a piece of wood particularly laced with knots. 

“You’re staying, then,” says the poltergeist at length. 

“Yes,” Tom looks up, curiously. “Does that offend you?”

The young face twists into a scowl, which Tom finds makes it much more interesting. The eyes flash. At full resolution they would likely be a lovely bright green.

“You’re messing with the house,” it grumbles. “And you’re a  _ slob _ .”

Tom sniffs. “I’m alone here. Who can criticize my housekeeping?”

“ _ Me _ !” the poltergeist exclaims.

“Then continue with your remediation efforts,” Tom says with a careless gesture. 

“My  _ what _ ?” 

“Your...housekeeping,” Tom explains patiently. “It’s not as though you have anything better to do.”

“I…” the presence’s mouth falls open. For a moment it’s startlingly vivid, and Tom can see the way the enamel of his molars is white as pearls, or the bone around Tom’s forefinger.

“Then we’re in agreement,” Tom says, pleased. He abhorred the thought of paying someone to clean the house. Perhaps the presence — definitely a B+ — will be worth the inconvenience after all.


	3. Chapter 3

Tom has few acquaintances and no one close enough to be called a friend. He has his colleagues and admirers at and around the bank, of course, but at the end of the day he prefers solitude.

Still, he is disappointed when the next week passes and nothing appears on his doorstep.

Possibly, he reasons, there will be a culmination on the thirty-first? That is a date of magical significance, after all, even if the non-descendants have appropriated it for their own idiotic purposes. Costumes and the expectation of free candy? It’s senseless.

It’s almost dark out when the specter appears. They haven’t spoken since the first time, weeks before, and Tom might have mistaken the presence for an intruder if he didn’t recognize it from a less corporeal state. It’s non-transparent, and Tom swears he can hear it breathing in the moment before he turns, startled, almost dropping his tumbler of whiskey.

“Oh,” Tom says, seeing the presence leaning in the doorway of the den. “It’s you.” Tom takes in the gangly body of a twenty-something, draped in ill-fitting clothing. Still, he can’t deny the figure would have been appealing in life, lithe with light brown-skin, a sharp contrast to the eyes which, as Tom had suspected, are gemstone-bright. 

“You’re not going to pass out candy?” The poltergeist looks out the windows through a small gap in the drawn curtains. 

“No,” Tom says, though he usually hates rhetorical questions. “As far as they’re concerned, I’m not home.”

Those green eyes study him, sharply. “You’re surly tonight.”

Tom crosses his ankles and ghosts his tumbler under his nose, inhaling but not yet sipping. “Am I?” There will be no way to leave the body without someone seeing who has left it there, so his expectation that he would receive a delivery this evening seems to have been in vain. 

The specter is watching him curiously. His — its — chest is certainly rising and falling. The skin on its wrists, where it’s rolled back its sleeves just an inch, looks soft and warm. Strange. Fascinating.

“What was your name?”

The presence blinks, surprised. Then hesitates. “Harry,” it says at last.

A few bold children knock on the door. Tom drinks his whiskey. The presence lingers, pulling a few of the books from Tom’s shelf with the most worn covers, and reading random pages before replacing them. It is not an unpleasant evening.

Near midnight, Tom opens the door and looks at its threshold, just to ensure it’s empty. The specter is watching, and for some reason, looking startled by the look on Tom’s face.

“Whoever it was must have realized,” Tom said, “that I couldn’t possibly return their affections.” He closes the door and frowns at it, thoughtful.

“Is that right?” asks the ghost. “You couldn’t?”

Tom feels suddenly irritated. “Why did they miscategorize you? You’re obviously an A+.” The whiskey has left him faintly nauseated, though he didn’t over-imbibe. “I don’t need a — roommate, for the gods’ sake. I would have passed on the listing altogether if I’d known.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” The ghost is infuriatingly nonplussed. “You love my house.”

“It’s _my_ house!”

“No,” says the ghost, almost sadly. “It’s not. But I’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want.”

“It most certainly is!”

To Tom’s satisfaction, the ghost blinks out of sight at once. The last glimpse of its face showed Tom a small, sad smile, and slight crinkles at the corners of its green eyes, like it was slightly less juvenile than he’d assumed at first.


	4. Chapter 4

Tom spends much less time outfitting his house, and more time researching ghosts, in the coming weeks.

He learns nothing but a variety of conflicting theories, exhausting the library’s supply of books and lamenting the abolition of the internet twelve years before. Finally, in frustration, he summons the ghost itself.

He reads in Latin from a book and throws salt in the fire. Nothing happens. He tries the English translation. “Reveal thyself, embittered spirit!” He looks expectantly around the room. He sees nothing except his own shadow, leaping and exaggerated in the firelight.

For some reason his frustration guides him to an impulsive, “Harry!”

The ghost steps through the doorway with his arms crossed. “Yes?” Tom’s heart beats a little more quickly at the sight of the ghost, but that’s probably just his sense of accomplishment in the aftermath of a difficult summons. 

“It shouldn’t be possible, your varying degrees of corporeality.”

“According to what? Your books?” The ghost leans against the doorway and raises a thick black eyebrow. 

“_ The _ books,” Tom shoots back, miffed. “Your nature should be fixed.”

“It is a little unusual, but under the circumstances, it’s to be expected.” The ghost sounds resigned. “After all, you’re encouraging the house.”

“Encouraging it?” “Yes. It had almost lost hope. Died out at last. If it had, it would have let me go.”

Tom, not understanding, made a small gesture for the ghost to carry on. Harry sighed and continued obediently.

“Houses retain a lot of occupant magic. But they need more than a tiny little dose to carry on. You have more than anyone has in years. Before you moved in, I thought it might finally happen. That I might finally be free.”

“Is that really how it works?” Tom shudders, filing away that delightful remark about his latent _magic_ (he _has_ to hear more about that, but not right now). “Why would you want that? Isn’t this better than nothing?”

The ghost looks uncertain. “No. Well, lately it hasn’t been so bad. I feel almost alive. But the years before…” he rubs his arms and looks pale. “No. Nothing could be worse than that. Drifting through silence, emptiness, except for the rare occasion I...snagged...on someone or something in the house, for just long enough to know what I was and what I...wasn’t.” He is certainly breathing heavily. His hair looks soft and full of movement. Tom is sure he could touch the ghost and he would be warm, yielding, alive — but that isn’t possible, is it?

“It’s my magic, then, that’s...revived you?” Tom tries to sound casual, but delight is coursing through his veins at this demonstration of his power. It must be that knowledge which makes the young man appear as such a delight to him.

Harry narrows his eyes. “Don’t get too excited,” he admonishes. “You’re just a Squib.”

Tom had never seen that name in his family tree, but perhaps the records were redacted to eliminate mention of the most prevalent families. It would align with the recent tradition of censorship in the government.

“You’re,” Tom breathes, stepping nearer to Harry, a hand outstretched, “my own creation.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Now that’s a stretch.” But when Tom’s fingertips graze his forearm, Harry jumps and his bright eyes go very wide.

“That shouldn’t be possible,” he says in a strangled voice, which trails away to a soft gasp when Tom closes his hand around Harry’s wrist, feeling the unyielding proof of bone. They stare at each other for a long moment, and then Harry disappears, leaving Tom left to stagger for balance, nothing in his tight fist but a lingering warmth not his own.


	5. Chapter 5

The body is fresh. A middle-aged man, his suit still intact, the collar of his dress shirt stiff and starched. A dusting of overnight snow has carpeted the walkway but there are no footprints. Tom closes the door against the bitter early November morning air, and turns with a smile to find Harry watching shyly from the other end of the foyer.

“You shouldn’t have.”

“How do you know it was me?” Harry asks, but his efforts at aloof fall short. He watches Tom come nearer and his eyes seem slightly unfocused. “I think I need to find my glasses,” he mutters. “I could hardly read the dates on the gravestones. Your stupid book said that a fresh body makes the best gift.”

“It was a lovely courting gift. Consider me wooed. I’ve been wondering, just how real has this house made you?” Tom slowly walks nearer, skimming a glance over the collar of Harry’s oversized shirt where his throat is flushed pink and licks his lips.

“I…” Harry begins, then trails off, dazed. “I feel quite real.” 

“Yes, quite real,” Tom murmurs, now close enough to cup Harry’s jaw in one hand. His pulse races hot against Tom’s thumb.

Harry’s eyes narrow but he makes no effort to move away as Tom’s other hand grasps his hip. “You just like me because…” he begins, but trails off with a sharp inhale when Tom’s hand slips under the hem of his shirt and reaches the skin beneath. So very warm.

“Because you’re trapped here no matter what?” Tom asks innocently, speaking straight into Harry’s ear and delighting in how he trembles. “No matter what I do to you?”

Harry goes still, like the mouse in the owl’s shadow. A chuckle erupts from deep in Tom’s chest and he leaves a chaste kiss on Harry’s cheek then leans his forehead in the soft hair on Harry’s temple with a contented sigh.

Yes, the house and all its contents are truly, exquisitely, exactly to his tastes.


End file.
